Poem of the Week: M.J. Iuppa

Groundwork

The fence that wasn't a barrier, that didn't hold

anything back or up, but was the grid over the scene of

smoke rising, smoldering from September

to December, as the slow green trucks crawled

back and forth, churning up gray dust, heaving

lumps of cement, twisted iron beams, crushed

glass, bits of paper floating in the swirl

of tires rumbling past us, who stood on iron milk crates,

straining to see into the pit, staring into the silence of

the gathering crowd, into the rainless faces,

the on-going thoughts, what couldn't be imagined

or said out loud, not now, not in that hour, or the next --

faces still searched the blue patch of sky, that gaping

space above it all, and right before us, the fence

that held a single sunflower.

-M.J. Iuppa

Used by permission.

First published in Le Mot Juste Anthology, 2008,

and appears in Within Reach, Cherry Grove Collections, 2010.

M.J.Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Her most recent chapbook is As the Crows Flies (Foothills Publishing, 2008) and second full length collection, Within Reach, (Cherry Grove Collections, 2010). She is Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY.

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